Attaching a PCB inside a plastic case without drilling through the project box itself.
Drilling holes in a project box, front panel or bezel usually leaves an amateur look to your work.
There isn’t anything wrong with screws they can just be a bit unsightly, especially if there are a lot of them.
Below are images showing how you can mount PCBs, sensors, LCD displays etc. to the inside of a project case or behind a front plastic bezel.
The first thing you need to identify is what solvent you need to go with the type of plastic you are working with.
Methylene Chloride, Acetone, MEK etc. are common solvents used for welding plastics.
Let’s say we have a PCB with 2-56 size mounting holes and we want to attach this to the inside surface of a white piece of acrylic plastic.
We need four small 1/8-inch-thick acrylic standoffs/spacers.
We will drill a #47 size hole in each standoff and thread these holes with a common 2-56 screw.
Here we have a strip of 1/4-inch-wide by 1/8-inch-thick acrylic with #47 holes drilled in a line.
Using a slow speed electric screwdriver and a stainless steel 2-56 screw, each hole is threaded.
After threading, a cut is made about half way between each hole.
This leaves us with plastic 2-56 four cornered nuts.
The 4 standoffs are mounted to screws so the standoffs are in line with the PCB holes.
Using a Capillary Dropper, one drop of methylene chloride is added to the side of each plastic nut.
After about 20 seconds the solvent welds the acrylic nut to the acrylic panel.
In about half an hour the assembly is cured.
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